Left 4 Dead: The Pack
by Genox
Summary: Zoey becomes a Hunter after being separated from her friends. She must learn how to become a hunter and deal with her new "family". But there are many twists and turns along the way, and her love for one of the survivors may end in tragedy.ExZ, FxR.
1. Nightmares

Left 4Dead: The Pack

_The woman ran for her life. She was panting, cold sweat beating down her neck. She wore a faded red jacket and torn jeans, her sneakers squishing in the puddles of water that were left behind from the last night's thunderstorm. The street smelled of puke, fire, and the dozens of rotting corpses that had been strewn across the street. Up ahead she could see the outlines of her three friends: An old man wearing army fatigues, a black office worker, and a tattoed,vest wearing biker with a beard. They were yelling something that sounded faint and indistinct in her fear. _

_ She dashed into a dead end alley. She could hear the screeching, hood wearing monster just behind her, its hot breath on her neck. She screamed, tripped and fell, the red door that led to safety just across the street. The creature, the dark hunter, pounced on her, clawing at her stomach, her warm blood splashing across her face. She yelled in defiance at her own death. She struggled to stay alive, her heart beating slower and slower, its rhythm_

_becoming relaxing, its lull pulling her into a dark embrace of death. She saw her parents, the ones who had died two weeks before._

_ She slowly drifted toward them, tried to embrace them, but they pushed her back, back into the world of the living, where she still had something to accomplish. The woman suddenly became all too aware of her surroundings, once again. The smells, the sights, the nightmares of this world once again planted themselves in her mind._

_ Then she saw it, the one thing that would save her: a car's fuel tank. With one last yell, she pulled her handgun out of her holster and fired twice. She shot the monster that was clawing away at her innards, knocking it off of her and onto the floor, where it got ready to pounce her again. Everything that happened next went in slow motion. She fired at the car's gas tank, creating a huge explosion. The woman was propelled into the air, landing on a wall, where she was impaled by a piece of a pipe that had been knocked loose in the explosion. But she didn't notice the pain of the pipe, or the burns on her face and arms. All she could see was the face of the monster. Her face._


	2. Swamp Fever

**2: Swamp Fever:**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to Left 4 Dead. All credits go to Valve.**

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**Authors Note: My last chapter was really short, so I'm sorry if it sucked. Anyway, this is my first fanfic, so go easy on me. Please R&R if you can. I love all constructive criticism.**

Zoey woke up screaming, sweat streaming down her dirty, faded red jacket. She looked around the safehouse,disoriented.

"Geez, Zoey, can't you see I'm trying to get a little sleep here? Warn us next time before you start yelling your head off!!!"

Zoey looked over in the direction of the voice. Laying on a dirty, used sleeping bag was Francis, a former biker who always wore a vest and had plenty of tattoos. Not to mention the fact that he seemed to hate everything in existence, besides his vest and steam. His beard was thick and matted from days of traveling without rest. His muscled arms were scarred badly from an encounter with a witch, and his voice was hoarse from so much yelling in the past few weeks. He was cool, and was one of the companions that had traveled with Zoey since the infection had begun.

"Sorry Zoey, I'm just a little tired from everything we've gone through, and I just want to get some rest," Francis said.

"A little tired? Jesus, you look like hell!" Zoey exclaimed. " It's alright, though, I understand. I just had this really weird dream about...y'know... hunters and... Bill." Zoey sighed, and leaned her head against the wall, thinking about the companion that they had lost while raising the bridge, and the survivors they had helped escape. _Out of all the saviors to help someone escape, it had been them,_ Zoey thought. _How ironic._

"Yeah, I haven't stopped thinking about the old ma-- Bill, either." Francis said, snapping Zoey out of her trance.

"Huh? What? Who's screaming?"asked a dark-skinned man in office clothes as he stepped through the door. His name was Louis, and he was holding a radio. Louis was Zoey's favorite companion of the group, because his optimist attitude was always able to cheer her up and brighten her day. They became great friends quickly, due to the way they liked to joke around in saferooms before a big fight.

Louis had just been scouting around in the mining tunnels for information on how they would escape their current predicament : trapped in a swamp in the middle of nowhere . Before, they could have sworn they had heard gunshots and voices, but they had passed it off as another figment of their imaginations in this insane world.

"Zoey was just having a bad dream," Francis said. "Nothin' to worry about here, Mr. Manager."

Francis turned around and sighed. He sat back down on the grimy brown sleeping bag in the middle of the the gray, bleak, mining control room that had passed as their safehouse for the last seven hours and a half or so, and mumbled, " I hate tunnels."

Louis ignored him, and looked Zoey straight in the face. "Nightmares again, huh?" He asked. Zoey looked at him and said, "Yeah, except in this one, I was a hunter... not to mention Bill was still alive." She stiffened as she said the former survivor's name.

" Listen Zoey, I know you're hurtin' cause Bill died, but you gotta stay strong. We've got to survive. It's what Bill would want," Louis stated. "I know that, and I know that right now, Bill is watching us from high up in heaven right now. He's proud of what we've done, but we have to make it just a little further."

" Alright. I'm ready. For Bill," Zoey said. She straightened up quickly.

"Speakin' of surviving, have you found us a way out of here yet, Louis?" Francis said, now in a standing position, alert now because of the mention of Bill.

"Hell yeah., I wouldn't come empty handed after this," he said as he pointed to the muck on his shirt.

" Anyways, I found this radio on the body of a dead survivor. Listen to this." Louis pressed the radio's on switch, and the survivors heard this: " _**Any and all survivors, this is Darrius Brooks of the PCPD. I am infected, and I am evacing all survivors from a fortified cabin, as a final call of duty. If you are hearing this, you should proceed out of the mines, and the cabin will be near there. Your path has been spraypainted by red paint. Just follow the red line!!!"**_ After that, there was a recorded message saying that the tape's message would loop over and over again, until it was answered.

"Well, I guess that means we have to trudge through some more swamp water before we're saved," Francis sighed.

"Let's go guys," Zoey commanded as she kicked down the safe room door. After Bill had died, she had become the leader of the group. She had also sworn to use Bill's M-16 and pistol to kill every zombie she faced from now on.

As the group walked through the dry, earthy, pitch-dark mining tunnels, they noticed how few zombies there were. " Where are all the zombies, man? I mean, it's not like I'm not grateful but...." Francis trailed off as he wiped some drool off his shoulders. He continued on toward the exit ladder and then---Wait, what? Drool? Francis looked at his hands and a wave of dread instantly passed through the group. They heard the shrieking of the horde as the roof collapsed several meters away. " Guys, I got a bad feeling about this," Louis said quietly. Francis yelled in fear, " HERE THEY COME!!!!!! IT'S THE HORDE!!" Zoey, who was halfway up the ladder, looked down and whispered curses under her breath. She began climbing even faster, as Louis began climbing up as well.

The familiar smells of dozens of zombies rushing to kill them all at once filled their senses. "Damn! I can't hold them back forev--" Francis was cut off by a familiar roar, the same roar they had all heard when Bill had died. "TAAAANK!" Louis and Zoey yelled in synch. Francis finished his sentence in a weak voice ",--er."

Francis yelled and shot into the crowd of advancing zombies, pumping his shotgun franitcally. "****, reloading!" Louis pulled his SMG from its holster and fired into the crowd while Francis desperately fed his shotgun shells.

At that moment, several things happened. The tank came around the corner, roaring, causing the roof and floor to begin collapsing. Zoey reached the top, at the same time that a hoodie wearing hunter was leaping towards her. Francis finished reloading, and turned to begin climbing the ladder to the surface.

Zoey turned around just in time to see a hunter pin her to the floor and begin clawing at her torso. She screamed in the face of the shrieking monster, yelling something along the lines of "get it off of me!"

The creature bit her in the neck at least three times, not enough to kill her, but just enough so that it would hinder her thinking and blind her with pain. She reached desperately for a weapon to fight this horrible thing. She closed her fist around the first thing she could find, and with as much strength as she could muster, she whacked the thing at the base of its neck. With a sickening crunch and a spurt of dark blood, the thing's head did a full 180 degree spin. She pushed the Hunter's dead body off of her, got up from the pool of water that it had pounced her in, and looked at the thing she had killed the Hunter with. To her surprise and amazement, it was Bill's M-16.

Meanwhile, down below, Francis was running to the ladder, trying to escape the collapsing tunnel that was filled with zombies. Louis was hanging from one hand, shaken by the collapse of the tunnel. Francis was still being pursued by a tank. He fired one shot blindly and missed. The tank was still coming, roaring with infected rage.

Louis knew they were going to die if he didn't do something quick. He reached for his belt and tossed the radio up, yelling for Zoey to contact the cop for rescue. He grabbed the other thing on his belt( Besides pills, which he loved and always kept with him at all times), a pipe bomb. He lit it quickly and tossed it down as soon as Francis was halfway up. The tunnel caught on fire and began to rock with

explosions. The ladder began to break as well. Louis looked up. They were almost there!!! Francis wouldn't make it, however, as an explosion created a gap in the ladder between the two survivors. "Jump for it, Francis!" Francis was too tired and too wounded to object. He jumped, and missed Louis'

hand by a couple of inches. Louis leaned and mannage to grab Francis' wrist. "Damn, you're heavy, Francis! Lay off the chips,man!" Louis groaned as he pulled Francis up while climbing.

Zoey was just finishing her conversation with the cop as the two others crawled out of the former entrance to the mining tunnels. She raised an eyebrow at their dirty, soot covered bodies and said, " He says he's not far from here, he'll be here in five minutes. The cabin's not too far either. C'mon."

The group of three trudged through a few meters of swamp. Francis was the first to see it. "Look, it's the cabin! Let's go,people!!!"

A new kind of strength surged through their bones as they sprinted towards the burning house. Dead bodies littered the ground, and military trucks were scatter around the area. As they reached the house, Louis kissed the ground ad raised his hands to the sky in triumph. "We're saved! All we have to do is wait five minutes! Praise the Lord in heaven! HALLLELUJAH!!!!!" The horde roared as one as the approached the sound of the yelling. Not only that, but they could distinctly hear two tanks in the crowd. "Louis, I think they heard you...." whispered Francis, clutching his gun tightly. Zoey yelled at the approaching crowd "Let's give 'em a party then, if that's what they want." "Damn straight," said Louis as he got into a firing position.

**Later on, the L4D survivors will meet up with the L4D2 Survivors. Zoey won't get infected for about four more chapters or so, and after that it will alternate between survivors and Infected Zoey. Sometimes there will be back to back survivor or infected. When I decide to do one of these **

**vote on which side you want: Infected or survivor. Please R&R. Thanks.**


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